Jazz Recommendations – 2013 Releases

I just love how an album can be presented in a way that’s understated, not flashy, yet still be emotionally charged.  On Hidden Meaning, his fourth release as session leader, pianist Michel Reis gives a performance that might not knock anyone out of their seats, but is likely to make an indelible impression that will keep a listener’s thoughts coming back to this album over and over.  It has mine.

Your album personnel:  Michel Reis (piano), Stefan Karl Schmid (tenor & soprano saxes, clarinet), Robert Landfermann (bass), and Jonas Burgwinkel (drums).

The album songs fall into two categories.

Opening track “Repercussions” represents the larger, and better, of those two categories.  Piano serenity with moody saxophone over the top.  Drums a pleasant, susurrant chatter.  Bass a low warm hum.  A cadence as calm and reflective as gentle waves lapping up against the shore.  Tracks like “Elegy” and “Hidden Meaning” features Reis’s piano gliding with the stark grace of an icy sheet in the glow of moonlight.

The other category features surges of tempo, gradually building up in intensity then suddenly receding before the wave can crest and come crashing down.  A few tracks, like “Seduction” and “What Comes Later” emit some heat, but even this isn’t the kind of thing to cause permanent burns.  And though tracks like “Americana” lead out with tense rhythms, it’s the lovely way clarinet comes fluttering in over the top that tamps down any thoughts of the music dashing away too quickly.

Anyways, just wanted to get in a mention about this recording.  It’s unlikely to make any of my Best Of lists, but I’m impressed by the way it keeps drawing me back in to listen to it again and again.  Well worth giving a listen to.

Released on the Double Moon Records label.

Jazz from the Luxembourg scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

I originally became familiar with the music of Francesco Turrisi via his 2011 release Fotografia.  An excellent album that featured a standard piano trio line-up, and fixated on a balance between chamber music and folk-infused jazz.  What resulted was a pleasant duality of elegance and earthiness.  On his current release, Songs of Experience, Turrisi sticks with the trio format, and while he has Joao Lobo returning on drums, he replaces the bass position with trumpeter Fulvio Sigurta.  This results in an entirely different album.  And while I would’ve been eminently content with more of the good stuff, I’m thrilled to witness Turrisi’s new direction.

Your album personnel:  Francesco Turrisi (piano), Fulvio Sigurta (trumpet), and Joao Lobo (drums).

On its face, Turrisi has recorded a Nordic Jazz album.  Moody and serene, the melodies drift and the rhythms twitter, and expansive sounds play out in a quiet corner of the world.  In fact, the Nordic influence isn’t much of a stretch.  Dublin-based, but his roots in Italian soil, it’s not inexplicable that the sounds of Scandinavia might’ve trickled down into Turissi’s music.  Aside from the obvious effect of the digital age blasting through geographical barriers to allow music expressionism to spread across the face of the planet, there also appears to be a trend forming where the Nordic approach to Jazz is moving south as the Mediterranean Jazz movement reaches north to meet it.

There are examples on Bird is the Worm of Italian musicians performing tranquil Jazz influenced by local folk music.  And while the mannerisms of the Italian folk music differ, say, from those of Copenhagen, the traits that become fused with Jazz create commonalities in sound.  The crosscurrents of influence are also a result of musicians heading to other countries to study, as Turrisi did when he left Italy to study at Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands.  Collaborations of differing musics find the soft places where similarities exist, and thus conjure up new ideas and new expressions and new sounds.

But this is all just the talk of influences and music trends… inside baseball, of interest primarily to jazz geeks like myself.  Maybe to you, too.

What is the music like?

Piano with an icy sharpness, trumpet that expresses a weariness and hopefulness concurrently, and drums that say a lot when speaking very little.  This is music that fills up the room when a pervasive stillness has taken hold.  This is music that speaks in hushed tones, takes its time to express itself, and is fantastically evocative when it does.

Some tunes, like “Incubo N.1” offer up a Mingus-like mix of avant-garde and blues.  And “Birth” is an exasperated statement of chamber music… something that, perhaps, fans of Wayne Horvitz might appreciate.  But mostly we’re presented with tunes of elegance and austerity, dramatic tension persistently held at bay from finally boiling over, and, most importantly, a slowly unfolding beauty that develops seductively from the first note to the very last.

Outstanding.

The album is Self-Produced, released on Turrisi’s Taquin Records label.

Jazz from the Dublin, Ireland scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: MP3

These are simple songs.

Three musicians, four songs, an intimate recording.

Trumpet, sax, and piano.  Strands of bright melodies like lights on a Christmas tree.  Melancholic statements shot through with streaks of warm harmony.  Compositions that contrast a dreamy presence with a bracing vulnerability.

This is quiet music for quiet moments.  It is music that breathes sadness even as it remains hopeful.  This is music for late night bars where all the dreams are cracked, but still worth fighting for.  Simple songs that open doors to complex reactions, sometimes on the cusp of something quite breathtaking.

Your album personnel:  Benje Daneman (trumpet, flugelhorn), Andrew Rathbun (tenor sax), Jeremy Siskind (piano), and guest:  Ashley Gonzalez Daneman (vocals).

Opening track “Sun Shadows” leads with melody right out of the gate.  The languid opening statement is followed by punchy phrases while keeping a casual stroll.  The presence of the melody is always present, even if just barely… like fading contrails of an airplane that has flown over the horizon.  Except that, in this instance, the trio ends with a final restatement of that melody.

“Floating On” brings Ashley Daneman in for a guest vocal.  The airy brightness of her voice brings a vibrancy to the album and a cheerfulness that adds an essential bit of lift to an album that might’ve nosedived into some exquisite, but ultimately oppressive despondency.  Rathburn’s sax and Daneman’s trumpet brighten noticeably in response to her tone.  And even after she drops off after this one song, it remains as an integral counterbalance to the lovely moodiness of the final two album tracks.

“To Lay Down One’s Life” begins with intoxicating melodic statements that threaten to drift off but suddenly coalesce into something even stronger.  The tune suddenly off-roads it with a free form section highlighted by Siskind’s somersaulting-down-stairs piano lines, and where Daneman’s vocals provided some needed warmth, Siskind’s piano emits some necessary heat.  Rathburn matches the rising temperature on sax.  The trio eventually return to whence they began, again, to the melody.  Of the four album tracks, it’s easily the most expansive.  Coming back home to the melody brings a clear focus to the distance traveled from the song’s first note to last.

Album ends with the title track.  Daneman’s trumpet just drifts atop Siskind’s piano’s sea of tranquility, and Rathbun’s sax enters with the unhurried ease of a setting sun.

A lovely ending to a lovely album.

The album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Kalamazoo, Michigan scene.

You can stream the entire album, and purchase it, at the artist’s bandcamp page.  Both digital album and CD format are available there.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD